The fictional Keith Alexander
General Keith Alexander, retiring chief of the NSA, likens himself to James Bond.
“Can anyone guess what number he keeps on his parking spot at Fort Meade?” [General Martin] Dempsey said. “007.”
I can accept the comparison so long as I remember than James Bond is a fictional character and that Alexander has presented a fictional character in public. He has repeatedly lied about the NSA’s gathering of intelligence of American citizens within the bounds of the USA.
“[T]he story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is absolutely false” he said in 2012.
Later in the year, he claimed that
the bulk collection of US phone data had assisted in uncovering 54 terrorist plots, 13 of which had a “homeland nexus”
This estimate was later reduced to one and that claim was later dismissed as untrue.
General Alexander’s character betrays a loss of the very values that defined (and should continue to define) this country: to preserve liberty, justice, human rights, and human life at home or abroad. That neither he nor James Clapper, director of national intelligence has been called to task for their indifference to reality and reliance on fiction is a disgrace and shows the depth of “fiction” at the heart of our government.
All quotes from the celebration of Alexander’s retirement as reported HERE